Archive for January, 2007
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
News: Novell lands major desktop contract in France
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS9524633069.html
Analysis — At the Paris Solutions Linux show on Jan. 30, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-largest automobile manufacturer, and Novell announced the signing of a multiyear contract for the deployment of up to 20,000 Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop installations plus 2,500 copies of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
LinuxWorld NYC Anyone?
Anyone planning on being at the LinuxWorld NYC event in Feb? Let me know if you’re going to be in town.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
SOG: Adobe PDF Q&A
High quality analysis of the Adobe PDF/ISO news (as I’ve come to expect):
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2007/01/30/iso_pdf/
The last paragraph reminded me that I too have harped on Adobe for being to controlling and not embracing an ‘open’ approach to their business model. Just like many others, I hope this is an indication of more to come in the future.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Fedora Core 6 lands on systems from over 1M unique IPs in just 74 days…
Saw this debate over at /. and thought I’d chime in with a comment. First, this is unique IPs… that would mean 1 count on FC6 servers would be 3 Linux systems in my house. Now I happen to run OpenSUSE, Ubuntu/FC6, and Gentoo now, but were I a straight FC user, that unique IP stat would undercount the true # of systems.
So I do think it’s ok to “count” users? First, “privacy” arguments/fears are mostly unfounded with a method like Fedora implements. Tracking unique IPs connecting to your yum server (or to your xyz server) is nothing that interferes with privacy. But it does offer an estimate into the size of the community and that lets people make informed decisions on where to invest.
If you ask IDC for the # of Linux desktops out there, it’s likely less than what Mark Shuttleworth would say Ubuntu has - and that’s just 1 distribution.
I also know other open distros are counting in their own ways, and I think all of this is good. What would be nice+ would be an automated collection process so that 1 site could aggregate all the distro stats together via an RSS/Atom/unameit feed. So take the Fedora count, add in an Ubuntu count, etc. The community could do good things by aggregating the mass # of voices out there for say hardware support from some market blinded company that won’t release Linux drivers. Once you have the hardware, next stop is ISVs who refuse to support the Linux desktop environment. Some catch flack over it when users voice in aggregate, maybe catch some bad pr, but can turn that around and respond positively.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Almost time to get Jazzy…
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Your software is now legacy software
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
“Experts: Don’t buy Vista for the Security”
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
OpenSUSE Build System
Nice writeup by Miguel. There was an announcement that the Build Service is now itself open source. I think this is an outstanding move by OpenSUSE and should help Novell in the long run if more ISVs start using this in house. I’m not yet sure this provides the long term complement to the LSB ABI work but it certainly seems to be a step in that direction.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jan-26.html
Monday, January 29th, 2007
Start spreading the news: Adobe PDF format going to ISO
I haven’t had time to pour through the details of what this means for ‘opening up’ the PDF format or how open this move is with respect to format versions, but I feel certain enough that 1) this move was long overdue by Adobe and 2) this move will help entrench the market leading PDF for the upcoming Office 2007 battle Microsoft hopes to win with Metro. The news has been huge, and visible just about everywhere signaling most likely pent up demand to see Adobe do it. Adobe appears to be seeking a hybrid open/private path to follow in order to gain business advantage and I like it.
Photoshop on Linux anyone?? I see there are an embarrassingly low number of petitioners… (I didn’t actually sign it b/c it was so low…)
Friday, January 26th, 2007
Microsoft whalloping continues… and a little surprise survey sent to a Windows news list…
I’m disappointed to see no one has written about a little “thing” I discovered last week (please do click on this and take the survey). I did find it odd this survey only goes to a Windows professional targeted audience… and look at who’s hosting it (and what level of partner they are) - sounds fishy eh?
But I did find also this quote from a new Cnet article about Dell’s embrace of Linux interesting (and wondered if anyone briefed them on the value of open source):
“We should whack them, we should make sure they understand our value,” wrote Paul Flessner, a senior vice president in Microsoft’s server applications unit.
Friday, January 26th, 2007
Dilbert on Linux
Friday, January 26th, 2007
“Identity Mixer” Goes Open via Higgins Project
The cool part about this is the merchant never sees or stores your actual information. This seems similar to the way Citi does temporary credit card #’s that you can use once and that mask your true account.
More coverage here at Forbes.com
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
UbuCon NYC: Ubuntu Conference at Google/NYC Offices Feb 19
http://theubucon.blogspot.com/
———————
From: John Mark Walker
Date: Jan 24, 2007 2:21 AM
Subject: Welcome to The UbuCon - New York City - February 16, 2007
To: theubucon@theubucon.org, nylug-talk@nylug.org
Hello folks,
I am happy to tell you about the 2nd UbuCon, an Ubuntu user and
developer event, to take place at Google’s New York City offices on
February 16. Some of you may recall that the first UbuCon was held in
August at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
MORE INFO:
Sign up for the mailing list:
http://www.theubucon.org/mailman/listinfo/theubucon
Visit/edit/add to the wiki: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/TheUbucon
Read the blog: http://theubucon.blogspot.com/
February 16 will be a special day for Ubuntu users and the Ubuntu
curious. If you’re already an Ubuntu user, come on by - tell your
story of how you’re using Ubuntu Linux; help out at the installfest;
or just hang out with some interesting people. If you’re not an Ubuntu
user, then here is your chance to learn what the fuss is about.
The UbuCon New York will be held at the brand new Google offices in
Manhattan, located at 76 9th Avenue (or 111 8th Ave, depending on
which side of the building you enter). Part un-conference, part
installfest, and part user group meeting, The UbuCon will take place
simultaneously in one large auditorium and 3 - 6 small (~20 people)
conference rooms. Lunch will be served on-site.
Participants and attendees are all welcome, and true to form with free
software, everyone can be both. If you have an Ubuntu story to tell,
whether it’s as a sysadmin, developer, or home user, please tell us
about it.
If you’re interested in participating or helping out in some way, the
first IRC meeting will take place this Friday, 6pm ET on #ubucon on
irc.freenode.net.
I hope to see you there. Please forward this to whoever you think
would benefit. If you plan to attend, please RSVP. There is a limit of
200 people.
Thanks,
John Mark Walker
Founder, The UbuCon
Community Manager, Hyperic
_______________________________________________
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
Ford… just can’t get it right…
$12.6 BILLION LOSS… that’s more than most companies earn in revenue… Ouch, not looking good.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16804725/
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
More on MicroPedia Gate blowup
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/01/24/microsoft.wikipedia.ap/index.html
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
Microsoft… buying a social image???
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9314284615.html
What is going on here? Maybe I need to start a new blog and get a new laptop… mikewillsellhisreputationforalaptop.com is available…
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
Windows Vista SP1 on the way…. ughhh… wait, Vista isn’t out yet…
Windows Vista is not even fully out the door, but Redmond is already laying the groundwork for its first service pack release of bug fixes and other enhancements for the operating system.
The software maker has put out a call for businesses that want to be early testers of the software. “Interested customers should contact their Technical Account Manager at Microsoft to get nominated,” a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail.
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
WordPress 2.1 is Here
If you’ve been watching the dev lists you’ve seen this coming, but WordPress 2.1 is officially here. Here’s a list of what’s new: http://wordpress.org/development/2007/01/ella-21/
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
A legend moves on: Irving Wladawsky-Berger announces retirement
Sad to see someone like Irving retire from IBM, but I’m sure his presence and impact in this organization will continue on for decades more. Irving led a number of initiatives including transitioning IBM to Internet business and championing Linux as a growth, game changing opportunity and so I’ve always had a special respect for his insights and vision. I love this comment on Linux - it’s not just another OS.
On February 3, 2000, I gave a keynote presentation at the LinuxWorld Conference in New York, saying that we did not view Linux as just another operating system any more than we viewed the Internet as just another network when we announced our Internet initiative four years earlier. We viewed Linux very much as part of the evolution toward open standards to help integrate systems, applications and information over the Internet. Linux was then and continues to be the only popular operating system that runs on every single platform regardless of vendor or architecture, a property it shares with just about all major software associated with the Internet.
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
Ummm…. confusion in the marketing teams?
On the same exact day Sun announced this partnership with Intel, I got an email from Sun EduConnection featuring this “Xeon-Crispy Chicken!” movie… oops. Or is this just how Sun treats all of its growth “partners”?
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